Celebrate Free Speech Week

October 21 – 27, 2013 has been designated as Free Speech Week, a nonpartisan celebration of free speech and expression. The goal of the event is to raise public awareness of the importance of free speech in our democracy.

Freedom of expression and intellectual freedom are core values of the library profession. The American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights affirms the commitment of the library profession to these values, by stating that libraries “should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression.”

Many court decisions on the subject of free speech and expression involve the right to access books and library resources, including Counts v. Cedarville School Dist. (W.D. Ark. 2003) 295 F.Supp. 2d 996 (removal of Harry Potter books from school library violated students’ First Amendment rights to read and receive information); and Tattered Cover, Inc. v. City of Thornton (Colo. Sup. Ct. 2002) 44 P.3d 1044 (bookstore patron had right to purchase books anonymously, free from law enforcement scrutiny).

Celebrate your right to intellectual freedom and Free Speech Week by visiting the library!

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3 Comments

RJ Gardner

9:01 am on October 25, 2013

Friday Oct. 25th

Friends,

Unlike the more vocal proponents of “free speech,” many of whom are on the supposed political “Left,” and make full use of such rights, my experience with free speech, being expressed somewhere in the Middle-Middle to the Closer-Right, is to be suppressed at nearly every occasion where those contentious “Lefties” are involved.

Regardless of that, my own constant mantra and slogan, and to me a rather healthy one, is:

“Free speech, no matter who doesn’t like it.
“Free speech, even if I don’t like it. And,
“Free speech, even if You don’t like it.”

Unfortunately, in my youthful political protest years, which seem to attend to my life even now, those on the “Left” are less inclined, no, make that not at all inclined, to let anyone else speak, unless it is within the parameters and vernacular of the Left. Their constant screeching and hostile manner would frighten into silence and submission the timid and the confused, among whom I will not be found.

Free speech in the open forum of discourse is in fact not there to be found. As a now distant yet valid U.S. Supreme Court decision stated, only “the belligerent claimant in person” will prevail.

We publish every comment we get unless it is patently offensive, a personal attack, anything cruel, or (“I know it when I see it”) obscene. I have been out of the office for a conference, so sorry for the delay in getting your comment up and viewable. For context, everyone has to go to the Straaaaange cases post with the graphic warning.